Christy O'Connor charts the history of Cork and Kerry clubs' Munster final showdowns

NEMO Rangers have always been a machine in Munster but when they met Austin Stacks in the 2019 Munster club semi-final, the outcome was still the complete antithesis of what a Nemo-Stacks Munster club match was expected to be.

Nemo won by 18 points. Stacks only managed 0-5 over the hour. They had only earned the right to represent Kerry after Dr Crokes failed to win the county championship the previous weekend. 

Having not played championship in seven weeks, the lack of exposure to competitive action was a contributory factor, but the paucity of the performance was also an affront to the storied history of Nemo-Stacks matches.

In the mid to late 1970s, the clubs played out six epic games in the province, with Nemo needing three matches to win the 1975 Munster title. After drawing twice in mid-December, Nemo and Stacks returned to the Gaelic Grounds in January 1976 where Nemo triumphed by two points.

A year later, Stacks made up for that disappointment when beating St Finbarr’s in the provincial final by two points, with the Barrs having already beaten Nemo in Cork a couple of months earlier.

Similar to the Cork-Kerry rivalry of that period, the same intensity and fervour was reflected on the club scene during the early years of the Munster club championship. When Cork and Kerry clubs (or divisions, as happened in the 1970 final between East Kerry and Muskerry) met in seven of the first 12 Munster finals between 1964 and 1976, there was never more than one score between the teams. In six of those seven finals, the winning margin was either one or two points.

Even when Cork and Kerry clubs didn’t meet in Munster finals during that time, their meetings carried the same intensity and ferocity. In the 1972 Munster semi-final, Nemo only scraped past Kenmare by two points. The only anomaly during that period was UCC’s 14-point win against Stacks in the 1973 quarter-final.

The trend looked to be firmly set until a crack Thomond College side emerged on the scene and tore up the script in 1977. After defeating Stacks in a replay after extra-time in that year’s Munster semi-final, Thomond went on to beat Nemo well in the final.

That still seemed just a blip because Nemo and Stacks were still the two best teams in the province. When they faced off again in the 1978 semi-final, Nemo won a replay in Austin Stack Park by one point.

Stacks thought they’d atone for that disappointment the following season but they didn’t; Kilrush Shamrocks beat them in a semi-final by one point, which set up a Kilrush-Cork side Munster final for the second successive year. Stradbally, the Waterford champions, also took out Kerry’s Gneeveguilla the following season.

With Stacks not involved, Nemo and the Barrs looked primed to continue to dominate the province until someone stood up to them. And Castleisland Desmonds took up that charge.

Castleisland lost the 1981 semi-final to Nemo and the 1982 decider to the Barrs before returning to take down the Barrs in both the 1984 and 1985 Munster finals.

And then, incredibly, the Cork-Kerry Munster club final music died; over the next 10 seasons, the counties' representatives never once met in a provincial final.

After Laune Rangers and Clonakilty faced each other in the 1996 final, and Nemo played Glenflesk in the 2000 decider, there wasn’t a Cork-Kerry club final again for another 10 years.

There was a mini-revival at the outset of that decade, with three finals in succession; after Nemo beat Dr Crokes in the 2010 final, Crokes returned to win three in a row, defeating UCC and Castlehaven along the way in the 2011 and 2012 finals respectively.

In the intervening years though, there has only been two more Cork-Kerry Munster club finals; Nemo and Crokes again in 2017, and St Finbarr’s and Stacks in the 2021 decider.

There were some excellent club teams from Clare, Limerick, Tipperary and Waterford, which often took out Cork and Kerry sides. On the other hand, it wasn’t as if Cork and Kerry clubs weren’t meeting. They were – just not in finals.

TIGHT

Outside of those seven provincial finals involving Cork and Kerry clubs between 1985-2022, clubs from both counties met in 20 of the other 30 championships during those four decades. And the results were fairly even, with Cork clubs just marginally ahead 11-9.

There is also devil in that detail as nine of those 11 Cork wins came between 1986 and 2002. Cork clubs continued to do well against Kerry sides in finals but, in the last nine Cork-Kerry club meetings (outside of finals), Kerry are ahead 6-3. Much of that though, stems from Crokes’ dominance, with the Killarney club accounting for three of those six wins, including two in the last decade.

Crokes’ biggest victory against a Cork side was their destruction of the Barrs in 2018 when Crokes won by a colossal 21 points. The following year though, Nemo redressed that balance – not that they were seeking payback for the Barrs – when annihilating Stacks.

Prior to those two games, the biggest winning margin in a Cork-Kerry club game in the previous 32 years was seven points, which had happened on five occasions.

Considering the size of the province, especially when compared to say, Leinster, and given the strength of Cork and Kerry clubs, it is surprising that Sunday’s Castlehaven-Dingle final is just the eighth final pairing between the counties in 37 years.

If anything though, that has added to the intrigue and anticipation around the fixture.